


reshuffling the deck (a magician's trick)

by axilet



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Here Be Headcanon, Major Character Death (offscreen), Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 22:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2000250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axilet/pseuds/axilet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saki Konishi and Yosuke Hanamura trade places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reshuffling the deck (a magician's trick)

She never really liked him. She never really hated him either. It’s not exactly his fault, it’s not as if he’s awful, mean, beyond contempt. It’s life, it’s all the mistakes she made and can never take back, it’s frozen silences at the dinner table and the oil-slick of another city boy she can never peel off her body.

_You’re so pathetic, Hana-chan. Hanging around me, always getting in my way at work and hoping I’ll notice you, drinking up every halfway nice word I drop like a treat to a begging puppy, as if it isn’t totally obvious the only reason I tolerate you is because your dad signs my checks, because I hate your stupid store only slightly less than I hate my stupid parents…_

These are her thoughts, the dark waters running under her polite smiles, her pleasant _Welcome-to-Junes_ facade. She could have crushed him at any moment; found the cracks in his defenses and reduced him to nothing with a few well-chosen words; she could even have played along, milking him for time off and pay raises for all he’s worth. She could have. Sometimes she tells herself she _will_. To be in control, for once; that was what it meant to ruin him, as she ruined herself, and take a twisted delight in mocking him as she was mocked.

But she doesn’t, she never does, for reasons she doesn’t care to examine. And she is glad for it, pitifully glad, and desperate for any shred of relief, when the body is found; hoisted brokenly on the TV antenna for the world to see, a horrifying enough death without any contribution from her to all that he must have suffered.

And that’s the reason why she approaches his schoolmates, drifting bereft and shocked in between the Junes shelves -- to apologize, maybe, to the dead boy, the only way she still can, to confess or to comfort. That’s the reason why she is there to see Souji put his hand into the TV screen, and from that point her life changes forever.

* * *

 _We’re the reason he died_ , her Shadow snarls, eyes stretched crazily wide around the pupils golden and polished as a mirror. Saki backs up further into the wall, unable to look away. _Don’t deny it. He was always looking for a reason to impress us, and what would be more impressive than a murderer? He would have been a hero,_ it purrs _, a hero who could save us from our despair, at long last…_

Dimly she hears Souji’s voice, raising in urgency; but the words are distorted, unclear. Yosuke is crying again, his loneliness and misery like an infection creeping under her skin, into the ridges of her brain. _But he was always smiling,_ she thinks helplessly, crushed into the floor with the weight of her guilt. Yet, damningly, he is saying that he likes her (she knew that), and that she is practically the only thing in Inaba he looks forward to seeing everyday (she didn’t know that).

 _He was nothing to us!_ her Shadow insists in gleeful delight. _He was a bug to step on to make ourselves feel better. And that is the truth you can’t bear to hear. The truth of your corrupted, despicable self._

“No!” Saki flings back, unable to take it any longer. “You’re lying! I have nothing to do with you, I’m not you, and _you’re not me_!”

The Shadow doubles over, wild laughter like sobs wracking its body. _That’s right!_  it shouts. _We have nothing to do with each other, which means I can do_ this _to you!_

Saki only has a moment for dread before the strength leaves her body in a rush, and she is falling through a darkness full of yellow eyes and groping hands, yanking at the threads of her to make her unravel. Choking on her fraying lungs Saki cannot even scream.

 _So you have judged yourself, so I grant it,_ the Shadow’s voice whispers to her, and she knows it to be true. But then abruptly the darkness lifts and she is being cradled in Souji’s arms, looking into his face; spotting the exact moment the lines of worry around his eyes loosen with relief.

“I fought it off for the time being,” he tells her. “But I couldn’t kill it, not without killing you too.” He hesitates. “I heard everything.”

Saki looks away, her face burning, her shoulders tensing. But Souji’s voice is soft and non-judgmental as he says, “You must have been suffering for so long, to carry a burden like that. It’s not your fault you were hurt or tried to protect yourself from being hurt again. It’s _not_ your fault Yosuke Hanamura died,” he emphasized.

Breathing is a chore; Saki, with effort, swallows a gulp of cool air into her clenching throat. It’s harder still to accept the kindness Souji is offering so easily, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to do, the only natural thing. “He said he wanted to keep me safe, the day before he died,” she says quietly, the words spilling out in a rush. “I just -- I just laughed him off like I always did, I told him not to make any promises he couldn’t keep-- ”

“He couldn’t promise you that,” Souji says at once. “I’ve just found this power, and even then I almost let you die right in front of me.” His hands grip her shoulders harder, not deliberately but spasmodically. “I’m glad you didn’t,” he says, almost inaudible, and for a moment his calm cracks and she realizes that he’s frightened, that he’s actually a boy a year younger than her, and that she didn’t know how he had rescued her but she can make a guess from his cut-up appearance, the blood smeared across his cheek.

“Are you all right?” she says, stricken.

“You aren’t responsible for this,” Souji repeats, grasping the thread of her thoughts and snapping it. “I opened the way, and then we came down here to solve the mystery together. And we did, at least part of it. We’ve found the killing weapon.”

Behind his back Saki can see the Shadow, staring into nothingness, beaten into submission, and feels not the satisfaction she had expected but a ringing hollowness within. She thinks of yellow-eyed Yosuke, all the things he might say, all the words that had been poured into the unsent letters bursting out of the seams of the bedroom, from a heart overflowing with pain; in his way Yosuke had been as well-practiced a liar as her. She thinks of Yosuke dying in confusion, in utter misery, drowning in a black sea as the Shadow devoured him as she too would have been devoured. Her guts twist. “Did he come in here by accident, or was he -- on purpose--” She feels sick. Yosuke wasn't her friend, but...no one deserved this.

“That’s what we have to find out,” Souji says grimly.

“I owe you my life, Seta-san,” Saki says to Souji -- Souji who has no Shadow, she notices, wondering what it could mean other than the impossible.

“I simply returned what shouldn’t have been stolen away in the first place,” Souji says gently but firmly. He isn’t talking only about her near brush with death, about the continuance of the breath in her lungs and the beating of her heart. “You’re a good person, Konishi-senpai, you wouldn’t have put yourself in danger to help Yosuke, otherwise.” He smiles at her. “Will you face your Shadow now, please? I know you can do it.”

Saki nods, moved beyond words.. With his help she maneuvers herself into a position across from the silent Shadow, her now-cloudy eyes staring into nothingness. Stilled, but not vanquished; Saki touches her heart and feels the wound in it that the Shadow had bled from, drop by poisonous drop. A vicious flower sprung up from seeds buried in salted earth. Instinctive revulsion trembles through her at first but Souji looks at the Shadow with only sympathy, and says to her, “It’s been imprisoned for so long, it’s time to let her go free.”

Saki breathes out a long breath, and at its conclusion she faces the Shadow with shoulders squared. “I believed what everyone was saying about me. That I was...damaged, and everything I tried to touch would end up the same way. ” Tears prick her eyes as she finally acknowledges what she had always tried to forget. She sighs, and extends her hand to her Shadow, her reflection. “I was wrong. You and I...we deserve to live.”

Something in her soul is rising, smoke from a punishing weight burning away into ash. A small smile touches the Shadow’s lips, smoothing away the lines of cruelty and pain before she vanishes, returning to where she belongs. Saki laughs in surprise and joy as an image forms in her mind’s eye: a fox-faced woman in white robes, with a sheaf of rice in one hand and a sword in another. _So this is what my soul should look like, uninjured._

Souji catches her eye, knowingly. “What is her name?” he asks.

“Inari Ōkami,” Saki answers.

* * *

Souji and Chie leave her curled up in her futon to sleep off her exhaustion. She’s drifting, her mind too busy buzzing for proper rest when she hears Naoki coming through the door, kicking off his shoes. She smiles to herself, filling with an indescribable fondness, of the sort she hasn’t allowed herself for a while. It feels good.

“Sis!” Naoki pokes his head in, holding a box in his hand, trying unsuccessfully to appear outraged; rather more successful is the grin that keeps breaking through. “You could have at least left half for me!” His levity fades a little when he sees her lying down. “Are you all right, Sis?” he asks.

Saki levers herself up on her elbows. “Hey, come over here, Naoki.”

She enfolds him in a hug once he’s within grabbing distance. He makes token protesting noises before subsiding and wrapping his arms around her tightly in return. “I was...unwell,” she admits into his hair. “But I’m getting better now. I promise.”

This, she thinks, is a promise she can keep.

_end._

 

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought Saki's dungeon reflected not only just her darkest aspects, but those that would be most distressing personally to Yosuke, in order to bring out his Shadow; that was far from everything she was. Plus Saki trying to solve the mystery with this guy she disliked as a motivation is more interesting to me than yet another guy with a dead girl he was pining after as a motivation.


End file.
